The other night I was looking online for an oven-baked fries recipe, and came across Purple Foodie’s Garlicky Baked Fries. The pictures on Purple Foodie’s blog looked deceptively delicious – perfectly crisp, golden, and coated with garlic and pepper. Hoping to recreate this, I gave the recipe a try. This is my own variation of ingredients, but the cooking technique is the same.

It turns out the pictures weren’t deceiving after all… these oven-baked garlic fries were delicious!

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees
2. Slice 3 or 4 large potatoes (I used the Yukon Gold variety) into wedges, and then soak the pieces in a large bowl (that can be safely microwaved) of cold water for about 10 minutes
3. While the potatoes are soaking, grate about 6 cloves of garlic and combine with about 5 tablespoons of olive oil; at this point, I also added a few shakes of freshly ground pepper, red chili flakes, and some freshly torn thyme, cilantro and chives from the garden (when I say “torn,” I mean freshly cut herbs that you pull apart with your fingers into small pieces, discarding the stems)
4. Transfer about 4 out of the 5 tablespoons of the oil mixture onto a baking sheet lined with tinfoil (leaving as much of the grated garlic in the bowl as you can manage), and make sure the whole surface area gets covered
5. Next, drain the soaked potato wedges and then pour the remaining oil mixture into the large bowl; cover tightly with plastic wrap, and place in the microwave on high for 3-4 minutes (Purple Foodie says you can also parboil the potatoes to give them a cooking headstart… but microwaving just seems so easy!)
6. Remove the bowl from the microwave and carefully place the hot potato wedges on the baking sheet, making sure they’re nicely covered with oil and garlic
7. Bake for about 4o minutes, until crisp and golden (flip the wedges over at the halfway mark)

Enjoy!

This recipe sure beats baseball stadium garlic fries… and leftovers are delicious too. Thanks to the Purple Foodie!